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Monday, April 13, 2015

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Opportunity for Celebration! NASA Marathon Marks Mars Rover's Feat (Video)

NASA's Opportunity rover recently completed a historic marathon on Mars, so folks at the robot's home base ran a race of their own to celebrate. About 90 employees of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which manages the space agency's Mars rover projects, ran a marathon-length relay around the facility's grounds on Thursday (April 9), NASA officials said. Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars three weeks apart in January 2004, and were tasked with three-month missions to search for signs of past water activity on the Red Planet. Opportunity is still rolling along today, though it has been experiencing some problems with its flash memory — the kind that can store data when the power is off.

China to surpass US as top cause of modern global warming

By Alister, Doyle,, Environment and Correspondent OSLO, April 13 (Reuters) - China is poised to overtake the United States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise pressure on Beijing to act. China's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, when governments were becoming aware of climate change, will outstrip those of the United States in 2015 or 2016, according to separate estimates by experts in Norway and the United States. "A few years ago China's per capita emissions were low, its historical responsibility was low.

SpaceX to Attempt Bold Rocket Landing Today: Watch It Live

SpaceX aims to launch its robotic Dragon cargo capsule toward the International Space Station from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today (April 13) at 4:33 p.m. EDT (2033 GMT), then bring the first stage of its Falcon 9 rocket back for a vertical touchdown on an unmanned ship in the Atlantic Ocean. As of Sunday (April 12), Air Force forecasters were predicting a 60 percent chance of good weather for the launch, which will kick off the sixth of 12 missions SpaceX is flying to the space station under a $1.6 billion resupply contract with NASA.

NASA Probe Circles Mars for 1,000th Time

NASA's Mars-studying MAVEN spacecraft notched a spaceflight milestone this week — its 1,000th orbit of the Red Planet. MAVEN (short for Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) arrived at the Red Planet in September 2014 and began its yearlong study of the Martian atmosphere on Nov. 16. The 1,000th orbit was completed on Monday (April 6), NASA officials said. "The spacecraft and instruments continue to work well, and we're building up a picture of the structure and composition of the upper atmosphere, of the processes that control its behavior and of how loss of gas to space occurs," MAVEN principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, from the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, said in a statement.

China to surpass U.S. as top cause of modern global warming

By Alister Doyle OSLO (Reuters) - China is poised to overtake the United States as the main cause of man-made global warming since 1990, the benchmark year for U.N.-led action, in a historic shift that may raise pressure on Beijing to act. China's cumulative greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, when governments were becoming aware of climate change, will outstrip those of the United States in 2015 or 2016, according to separate estimates by experts in Norway and the United States. "A few years ago China's per capita emissions were low, its historical responsibility was low.

SpaceX rocket poised for launch – and a landing

By Irene Klotz CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (Reuters) - An unmanned SpaceX rocket was poised for launch from Florida on Monday to send a cargo ship to the International Space Station, then turn around and attempt to land on a platform in the ocean, company officials said. Liftoff of the 208-foot (63-meter) tall Falcon 9 rocket, carrying a Dragon capsule, was scheduled for 4:33 p.m. EDT/2033 GMT from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Once the capsule is released, beginning a two-day journey to the station, the rocket's first stage will flip around, fire engines to steer its descent and deploy landing legs to touch down on a customized barge stationed about 200 miles (322 km) off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. At a prelaunch press conference on Sunday, SpaceX Vice President Hans Koenigsmann put the odds of a successful landing at 75 or 80 percent.

Treating Troops' Sleep Problems May Reduce PTSD

Sleep problems are common in members of the military, and may increase the risk of developing mental health conditions such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to a new report. The findings highlight the importance of screening military members for sleep problems and treating these issues, in order to reduce soldiers' risk of mental health conditions and other impairments in everyday life, the researchers said. "In the military, the creed is mission first, as it should be, so sleep is often scarified for operational demands," said Wendy Troxel, co-author of the report and a behavioral scientist at the RAND Corporation. There is a need to educate service members and leaders "about the importance of sleep, how to maintain good sleep and how to identify if sleep problems are becoming debilitating," Troxel said.

iPads in the Classroom, But Do They Help Kindergartners?

When it comes to technology in the classroom, having kindergartners share iPads may be better for learning than simply giving each child an iPad, a new study suggests. This created a natural experiment in which one school had an iPad for every student, a second school had 23 iPads for students to share, usually in pairs, and a third school that had no iPads. In all classrooms with iPads, students used similar apps, including apps for math and literacy, and played similar games with the devices. On an end-of-year achievement test, which mostly measures early literacy skills, students who shared iPads scored about 30 points higher than both students in classrooms with an iPad for every child and students in classrooms without iPads.

Cosmetic Surgery Makes Women Look More Likable

Cosmetic surgery can make women look more likable, socially adept and feminine, a new study suggests. Women in the study who underwent facial rejuvenation — a term used to describe procedures that involve face, upper and lower eye, brow and neck lifts and chin implants — were rated more positively by strangers on several personality traits, the researchers said.

Nature-Inspired Factories Are the Future of Manufacturing (Op-Ed)

Ginkgo Bioworks is an OS Fund company. Follow him on Twitter at @bryan_johnson. In the 18,000-square-foot (1,672 square meters) facility, engineers churn out products ranging from scents and flavors to probiotics that fight antibiotic resistance. Ginkgo Bioworks, part of the OS Fund, is one of a growing number of companies engineering technology with lessons from nature.

On Mars, Liquid Water Appears at Night, Study Suggests

Liquid water lurks just below the surface of Mars on cold winter nights, according to new research. The Mars Curiosity rover has found evidence that when temperatures drop on cold winter nights, trace amounts of water from the atmosphere can turn to frost, which can then be absorbed into the upper layers of the Martian soil and liquefied. The liquid water evaporates back into the atmosphere after sunrise, when temperatures start to go up again.

Academics rate women job applicants higher than identical men: study

By Sharon Begley NEW YORK (Reuters) - When hundreds of U.S. college faculty members rated junior scientists based on scholarly record, job interview performance and other information with an eye toward which should be hired, they preferred women over identically qualified men two-to-one, scientists reported on Monday. The "candidates" were invented in order to see which factors - professional ones as well as things like gender and parental status - affect the evaluation of potential hires, part of an effort to explain women's underrepresentation in academic science. The bias toward women "was totally unexpected," said psychologist and co-author Wendy Williams of Cornell University. "We were shocked." Women have always been scarce in academic science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), now making up one-fourth of full professorships in science, engineering and health, according to the National Science Foundation.

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Sunday, April 12, 2015

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Dinos Died Here: Getting to the Core of Asteroid Impact Mystery

The catastrophic asteroid crash blamed for the demise of the dinosaurs also left a gaping scar in the Earth. That sprawling crater made 65.5 million years ago may hold the answers to many mysteries surrounding the space-rock event.

Land Bridge Linking Americas Rose Earlier Than Thought

The Isthmus of Panama has been blamed for everything from triggering never-ending ice ages to bringing bizarre creatures like the terror bird and the opossum to North America. "The land bridge has been used to explain a lot of global phenomena about 3 million years ago, but what we're saying is the land bridge formed 10 million years before that," said lead study author Camilo Montes, a geologist at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Before the Panama land bridge formed, a deep-water channel linked the Pacific and Atlantic oceans along the equator. Closing the gap with the rise of the land bridge may have cooled the Earth's climate by changing ocean currents, thus trapping the planet in a repeated cycle of Northern Hemisphere glaciations, according to several studies.

Apollo 13 Astronaut Exhibit Re-Launches at Chicago Planetarium

Forty-five years ago, Apollo 13 astronaut Jim Lovell "lost the moon" after an explosion crippled his spacecraft, turning his lunar landing mission into a struggle for survival.

Apollo 13 Custom LEGO Minifigures Mark Mission's 45th Anniversary

Houston, we have... Apollo 13 LEGO toy minifigures! The 2-inch-tall (5 centimeters) toy figures are modeled after the real James Lovell, Fred Haise, Jack Swigert and Gene Kranz (rather than their movie likenesses: Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon and Ed Harris). "We've ended up with some pretty accurate minifigures," Nick Savage, Minifigs.me co-director, wrote in an email to collectSPACE.

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Saturday, April 11, 2015

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200 Years After Tambora, Indonesia Most at Risk of Deadly Volcanic Blast

Two hundred years after the biggest volcanic blast in recorded history, scientists have ranked the countries most at risk of a deadly volcanic eruption. Today (April 10) marks the 200th anniversary of the 1815 Tambora eruption in Indonesia. Sulfur dioxide from Mount Tambora lingered in the atmosphere for several years, cooling the planet and triggering crop failures, famine and human disease pandemics in North America, Europe and Asia. "People were eating cats and rats," said Stephen Self, a volcanologist at the University of California, Berkeley and an expert on the Tambora eruption.

Why Gay Conversion Therapy Is Harmful

The Obama administration recently declared its support of a ban on minors receiving a controversial form of psychotherapy known as gay conversion therapy (also called LGBTQ conversion therapy). "The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm," Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said in a statement. Gay conversion therapy — which its supporters claim can change the orientation of gay, lesbian and transgender people — has a long track record of not working, according to a review of the scientific literature published by the American Psychological Association (APA). What's more, research suggests the treatment can worsen feelings of self-hatred and anxiety, because it encourages people to fight or hate a sexual orientation that can't be changed.

'Silkpunk': Redefining Technology for 'The Grace of Kings' (Essay)

Ken Liu is an author whose fiction has appeared in such outlets as F&SF, Asimov's, Analog, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Clarkesworld. Liu is the recipient of the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and The World Fantasy Award, all for "The Paper Menagerie," and won an additional Hugo for his story "Mono No Aware." Liu's debut novel, "The Grace of Kings" (Saga, 2015), the first in a fantasy series, will be published in April 2015. Contending warlords divided China into more than a dozen small kingdoms engaged in mutual warfare, until Xiang Yu, ruler of Western Chu, and Liu Bang, ruler of Han, emerged as the two dominant powers and fought a bitter war for control of all of China. The Chu-Han Contention, as the war came to be called, led to the founding of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C. to A.D. 220), which is often considered one of the golden ages of China's history for its technological and cultural development.

Richard Feynman's Lessons from Ants, Dinosaurs and His Dad (Video)

David Gerlach is the Executive Producer of Blank on Blank and he contributed this article and video to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. He proposed the parton model in the field of particle physics. Starting in 1966, science historian Charles Weiner interviewed Richard Feynman as part of an extensive oral history project at the American Institute of Physics. "Richard Feynman on What It Means" is part of The Experimenters series, from the creators of Blank on Blank.

For First Time, U.S. Dietary Guidelines May Boost Veggies Over Meat (Op-Ed)

In mid-February, a committee of top U.S. government scientists and nutritionists presented recommendations for the latest U.S. Dietary Guidelines. While those findings aren't news to many working in medicine and nutrition, the report represents a shift in what the government may recommend to the American public in the soon-to-be revised U.S. Dietary Guidelines. Simply reducing the amount of meat, eggs and dairy we eat has a profound effect on health, yet, instead, patients take a laundry list of drugs to battle their chronic diseases. Those findings were supported just weeks ago, at a meeting of the American Heart Association,, when researchers released results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study, which started in 1992.

Oldest Neanderthal DNA Found in Italian Skeleton

The calcite-encrusted skeleton of an ancient human, still embedded in rock deep inside a cave in Italy, has yielded the oldest Neanderthal DNA ever found. Although modern humans are the only remaining human lineage, many others once lived on Earth. The closest extinct relatives of modern humans were the Neanderthals, who lived in Europe and Asia until they went extinct about 40,000 years ago. Recent findings revealed that Neanderthals interbred with ancestors of today's Europeans when modern humans began spreading out of Africa — 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of anyone living outside Africa today is Neanderthal in origin.

Earthquake! Your Smartphone Could Give an Early Warning

Shaking a smartphone can help you pinpoint your parked car, discover a good diner and then pay for your meal. Earthquake early warning systems depend on the time delay between two sets of seismic waves. "A few seconds can be enormously helpful," said lead study author Sarah Minson, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California. The GPS warning system is deceptively simple: If the GPS receivers from just a few phones suddenly lurched in one direction, that's probably not an earthquake.

Mysterious Desert Fairy Circles Share Pattern with Skin Cells

Dotting the arid grasslands of Namibia, fairy circles have long baffled scientists as to how these round grassy patches form and why they disappear for seemingly no reason. Their mysterious nature has perhaps deepened with a new finding that the circles share a mathematical pattern with the skin cells of zebrafish.

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